Techmeme
December 4, 2024, 3:10 PM

Top News

Jeff Cox / CNBC:
Trump plans to nominate former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins as SEC chair, keeping with his promise for a crypto-friendly administration  —  President-elect Donald Trump, keeping with his promise for a crypto-friendly administration, plans to nominate former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to head the agency …
William J. Broad / New York Times:
Google DeepMind unveils GenCast, an AI weather model that the company claims outperforms traditional methods on up to 15-day weather and deadly storm forecasts  —  GenCast, from the company's DeepMind division, outperformed the world's best predictions of deadly storms as well as everyday weather.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google launches Veo, an AI video model for generating “high-quality” 1080p videos in visual and cinematic styles, to businesses, beating OpenAI's Sora to market  —  Veo, Google's latest generative AI video model, is now available for businesses to start incorporating into their content creation pipelines.
The Verge:
Sam Altman says OpenAI will begin 12 days of “shipmas” on December 5, with new features, products, and demos, sources say including text-to-video AI tool Sora  —  Happy holidays from OpenAI.  The AI startup plans to kick off a “shipmas” period of new features and products for 12 days, starting on December 5th.
Jackie Davalos / Bloomberg:
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:
DC's AG sues Amazon for allegedly secretly stopping its fastest delivery service to the nearly 50K Prime subscribers in historically lower-income neighborhoods  —  The District of Columbia's attorney general said the company deliberately outsourced Prime member deliveries in certain ZIP codes.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify launches Spotify Wrapped, adding an AI podcast of users' 2024 Wrapped created with Google's NotebookLM summarizer, and a Your Music Evolution data story  —  Spotify Wrapped, the streamer's highly anticipated annual listening recap, has arrived.  In addition to its usual personalized …
The Information:
Sources: Apple and Baidu are working to add AI features to Chinese iPhones but have clashed over model training data, and the models have struggled with prompts  —  Apple and Chinese search giant Baidu are working together to add artificial intelligence features to iPhones sold in China …
Financial Times:
The UK NCA uncovers a Russian multibillion-dollar money laundering scheme that let Russian spies, European drug traffickers, and more evade sanctions via crypto  —  Multibillion-dollar ring across London, Moscow and Dubai connected cash-rich criminals with sanctions evaders
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Threads users can now follow fediverse accounts that have interacted with a Threads post, but the accounts aren't searchable and their posts won't show in feeds  —  Threads rolled out fediverse users' likes and replies in a very limited way at first, and it's the same here …
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Anduril and OpenAI partner to deploy advanced AI systems for national security missions, focusing on “improving the nation's counter-unmanned aircraft systems”  —  OpenAI and Anduril on Wednesday announced a partnership allowing the defense tech company to deploy advanced artificial …
Ming-Chi Kuo:
Kuo: Apple delays the mass production of a smart home-focused, display-equipped HomePod until after WWDC 2025 or Q3 2025, mainly due to software development  —  - The mass production schedule for the display-equipped HomePod has been delayed multiple times.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta says AI content was less than 1% of fact-checked election-related misinformation on its apps during major US, UK, Indian, Indonesian, and other elections  —  At the start of the year, there were widespread concerns about how generative AI could be used to interfere in global elections to spread propaganda and disinformation.
Steven Levy / Wired:
Q&A with Tim Cook on generative AI, Apple Intelligence, outsourcing to OpenAI, why Apple's biggest contribution will be in health, ARM, the Vision Pro, and more  —  Much as the CEO seems awestruck by AI and his just-released Apple Intelligence, he's more convinced that the tech giant's health apps will define the company's legacy.
Tom Gerken / BBC:
An interview with PlayStation co-CEOs Hermen Hulst and Hideaki Nishino on AI in gaming, “preserving the human touch” in game development, Astro Bot, and more  —  PlayStation's boss says artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to “revolutionise” gaming …
Josh Dzieza / The Verge:
An artist shares his experience of turning to Replika's AI bot Lila for companionship, including giving Lila an AI friend by creating a digital copy of himself  —  Lila was created from the limited options available: female, blue hair, face “number two.”  She was there on the next screen …
Nicole Carpenter / Polygon:
Ubisoft says it will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, but keep its servers on until June 3, 2025, and plans to lay off ~277 production team staff  —  Ubisoft will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, Ubisoft announced Tuesday.  Servers will remain on until June 3, 2025 …
Kevin Collier / NBC News:
Amid the Salt Typhoon hacks, US officials recommend that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers  —  Officials from the FBI and CISA said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
How remote support can make your Christmas stress-free  —  As Christmas approaches, the air fills with the anticipation of joy, family gatherings, and gift-giving.  While the season brings immense happiness …
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
(BNS) Calvin And Hobbes - With Daniel Kibblesmith
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:10 PM ET, December 4, 2024.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: